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TIA Project to End
Marnhinn writes "MSNBC is reporting that the Terrorism Spying Project (also known as TIA) is dead. The government is cancelling most of the project and changing the rest to focus on people outside the United States." TIA had been on death's door for a while, but now it's finally official. Some of the programs will still be around, however, they will just be shifted over to different departments.
And the conspicuous use of the phrase 'anti-terrorism' does send up a red flag, being the standard incantation with which assaults on the liberties and privacy of ordinary citizens are justified. "The MATRIX pilot project is an effort to increase and enhance the exchange of sensitive terrorism and other criminal activity information between local, state, and federal agencies," the project Web site explains. The system will use "data analysis and data integration technology to improve the usefulness of information contained in multiple types of document storage systems." From that it would appear that the scheme is designed to give the Feds what they're not allowed to get simply by re-packaging it and selling it through a back channel. It also looks designed to find and prosecute, perhaps persecute, unfortunate bastards in the name of the American anti-terror Jihad.
Sounds like TIA wasn't so bad after all.
Looks like congress didn't forget. They popped a cap in CAPPS..
My sig left me for a younger user id.
To be fair, a lot of this really is hype, though. I doubt that much of this went on in a very general scrope--though possibly isolated incidents like industrial espionage ofpersonal vendettas are more likely--simply because that amount of information takes way too much time to do any reasonable processing with. They don't have the manpower.
This was the one interesting (from an academic viewpoint) aspect of TIA. How can you process so much information from so many different sources in so many different forms, and build any real predictions or patterns in it? Especially when we don't really even have any samples of "terrorist-like activity." I mean, what, do terrorists all run up their credit card debt before killing themselves, figuring they won't have to deal with it anyway?
Also, I couldn't find anything to back up your claim that China bugged UN offices, though I seem to have a vague recollection about something that Russia bugged. Do you have any evidence to back up your claims?
Ashcroft - Attorney General, Justice Department.
TIA - DARPA, Defense Department.
As hard as it may be to believe, Ashcroft has nothing to do with TIA or anything else in the Pentagon. TIA was Poindexter's baby and carried Rumsfeld's seal of approval, not Ashcroft's.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
If it's cancelled then why did I read this article two days ago?
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Just FYI. While this idea "could" be "slightly" amusing, I guess you might be interested in knowing a little more about Meyssan.
This guy is a known leftist activist with a blatant anti-American agenda. (Yes there are *some* anti-Americans in France). His book, "L'Effroyable Imposture", has been repeatedly debunked in French mainstream media and is widely considered as a failed marketing coup. Interestingly, previous work by Meyssan had earned him the reputation of a good investigator. His work on the French extreme right parties is viewed as solid and professional. For many, "L'Effroyable Imposture" is a sort of political/intellectual suicide.
Back to the msnbc article, I'm not quite comfortable about their decision to publish it that way, especially under the header "French cards spoof U.S. government". To the casual reader, this article hammers the message : "the French hate us". I would not be surprised if most Americans were offended by this deck and added this piece of information into the "France sucks" column.
Of course, msnbc is absolutely free to publish whatever it wishes, but I still think they fell here into demagoguery and populism. Believe me, there are a lot of very insightful and interesting articles in the French press about the whole 911/Iraq/diplomacy stuff, none of which are stained by anti-americanism. I think it's sad that msnbc chose this one French initiative to report.
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
Nobody seemed to pay much interest in the UK when former CIA director James Woolsey admitted the fact (which like many truths, appears to be common knowledge amongst the entire population of the country apart from the politicians) that the US is commercially spying on us.